The book is kind of structured like a blog, with dated entries from both Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King, interspersed with excerpts from e-mail conversations between the two of them. I, of course, couldn’t resist immediately flipping ahead to the entries for August 24 and August 26. For August 24, Stephen King writes about trying to pick up the game on the radio while driving around downtown Boston, and then getting back to his hotel and finding out they don’t have NESN, the cable home of the Red Sox, and Stewart O’Nan writes about the actual game, mainly Doug Mirabelli’s 3-run homer. For August 26, Stewart O’Nan writes about Bronson Arroyo: “Tonight he has his curve working and shuts down the Tigers for 7-1/3, giving up only an unearned run in a clutch 4-1 win.” Stephen King’s August 27 entry mentions the Dan Shaughnessy column from that morning’s Boston Globe, although he claims that the headline was “Dark Days Appear to Be Long Gone,” and I have scanned evidence that the headline was “Dark Days Have Hit the Road.” Perhaps this means that some of Stephen King’s other writing is less than accurate; I’m not sure if I believed all that about the girl with telekinetic powers wreaking havoc at her prom when I saw it. Or maybe they changed the headline for the later edition.

Anyway, starting back at the beginning of the book now, I’m only as far as spring training. Maura will perhaps appreciate what Stewart O’Nan says about the Red Sox’s spring training home: “Fort Myers is an endless grid of strip malls and stoplights, and everyone drives like they’re either having a heart attack or trying to find an emergency room for someone who is. We fly past Mattress World, Bath World, Rug World. It’s Hicksville, Long Island, with palm trees and pelicans.”